مطالعه دلفی از آینده بازاریابی آموزش عالی

This is the opening paper to the 2006 conference and discusses the future of higher education marketing. Taking a historic perspective the paper situates the discipline of marketing of higher education. From this grounding the paper offers an insight into what the future holds for educational marketing foundation on the view of senior practitioner in the market. The reported study sets groundwork for future research and debate. It concludes by drawing attention to what administers and marketers will need to consider in the future. In particular, the importance of blending strategic planning with marketing and developing integrated marketing systems is developed.

The marketing of higher education emerged in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of the field of health care marketing. Throughout the 1980s, the marketing of health care services was on the rise. The American Marketing Association and the Academy of Health Care Marketing sponsored conferences and symposiums that grew in popularity as marketers desired to apply their craft to hospitals and physician associations. Several individuals became aware of the important parallels they could draw between the health care market and that of higher education and launched efforts to expose challenges and prepare colleges and universities to meet them. Philip Kotler, who had formerly published a successful book on the marketing of health care with Roberta Clarke, issued the book, Strategic Marketing for Educational Institutions, with Karen Fox. James Burns of Tehila Associates became the founding editor of The Journal of Marketing for Higher Education. Tom Hayes, a colleague of James Burns, worked to gain the support of the American Marketing Association to sponsor a conference on this new topic. These individuals, among others, detected the following trends in the higher education market which mirror ones in health care. • Demographic changes in the 1980s caused a surplus of hospital beds which led to the closings and mergers of hospitals. Similarly, demographic trends showed that the potential number of eighteen year olds entering the higher education market was steadily declining. In particular, the decreased population of Caucasian, middle to upper middle class students was cause for concern. This factor would force a shift to new potential markets/mergers and closings in the future. • Increased operating costs, partly fueled by the cost of acquiring and implementing technology, impacted health care institutions. While newer and better diagnostic devices were entering the market, they were expensive to acquire, maintain and replace. Likewise, the computer age was affecting the costs and delivery mechanisms in higher education. • Resistance within the organization itself was perhaps the greatest challenge to marketing health care. Physicians and health care providers tended to discount marketing as an appropriate tool for health care, equating marketing with advertising, and personal selling that degraded the profession. The same perceptions existed in higher education among faculty and administrators who feared that marketing would impact the nature and integrity of the academy. With time, marketing became an invaluable tool to ensure the survival and ultimate success of many health care institutions. Each year, acceptance grew and the field expanded. Correspondingly, many marketers were confident that this same pattern would occur in higher education ( Blackburn, 1980, Dolence, 1993, Ferrari and Lauer, 2000, Hayes, 1991, Kotler and Clarke, 1986, Kotler and Fox, 1995 and Topor, 1997). In 1988, Xavier University sponsored a conference which attracted 135 participants, all sharing a common vision of the future of higher education. This conference later became the American Marketing Association's Symposium on the Marketing of Higher Education. At the conference the greatest obstacle to marketing colleges and universities became apparent: a lack of understanding of the field of marketing. Many believed marketing to be a communication tool only. At the time, the practice was common for a new marketing director's first assignment to be the design of a view book to attract the right type and number of students the institution desired. Many marketers of higher education in the late 1980s came from industry where the focus was on a physical product. Many did not understand marketing non-tangible services in general, much less marketing higher education specifically. Many came from internal public relations offices that did not understand the complete scope of marketing. This lack of understanding had existed previously in health care, but was addressed and rectified by Masters of Health Care Administration programs which included marketing courses as part of the curriculum. No similar course of study existed in the higher education field. Indeed, many challenges faced the development and growth of the field (Barry et al., 2001, Bok, 2003 and Litten, 1980). Nonetheless, the pressures of a demanding environment assured this development. The questions regarding how fast the field of higher education marketing will grow and manifest itself remains unanswered. Today, universities accept and practice marketing. The Symposium of Marketing for Higher Education is a major conference for the American Marketing Association (AMA). The Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) now calls their Communication division Communication and Marketing. More importantly, CASE offers seminars and conferences on marketing because of this developing focus. Marketing consulting firms and for-profit seminar companies offer services to an expanding market.

The results of the Delphi Study that this paper describes present the reader and academic administrators matters important to consider. • How do colleges and universities better coordinate their planning, activities and dollars to be more effective and efficient in a rapidly changing marketplace? • Which universities and colleges have the “organizational will” to implement the changes predicted by the participants in this study (with the knowledge that all change is painful to some extent)? This study sets groundwork for future research and debate. The concept developments that this report describes are finding their way into the proceedings and presentations of multiple disciplines and associations (the AMA, CASE, ACE, SCUP). Possibly, a third round of deliberations by participants could have provided further synthesis and focus in the findings. Future research topics are numerous. Both qualitative and quantitative studies may identify acceptance and misgivings of college administrators, especially presidents, to the topics discussed in this paper. Additional research and discussions may aid in the development of strategies and tactics involved in integrating marketing. Finally, exploration of organizational structures and the impediments to change may provide insights for implementing marketing of higher education to guarantee a successful future.